


run, rabbit.

by orphan_account



Series: we're the kids our parents warned us about [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 10:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11103018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: reap what you sow or burn the field down(everything's the same except everyone has superpowers)





	run, rabbit.

 

Abram doesn’t know who he is anymore.

That sounds odd, but everywhere they go, he has a new name.

Alex, Stefan, Chris, and those are just the ones he can remember.

His memories started fading around Stefan, where Mary had managed to slip them past the staff of a run-down motel after narrowly escaping the Butcher’s men.

“Abram, listen to me.” she had said, grabbing him by the shoulders hard enough to bruise the skin underneath his shirt. “I need you to repeat after me.  Don’t look back. Don’t slow down. Don’t trust anybody. Do you understand?”

He had repeated those words with cold accuracy, like the bite of a bullet as it tore right through you. She had hugged him after that, a foreign thing to both of them. Affection wasn’t a common thing between them anymore, not after Abram danced with death a week before. Since then, Mary was like the ghost of a mother he once had. Her hands gained more unfamiliar callouses, and they lost their familiar softness as well, becoming akin to brittle branches on a dying tree. Her face became gaunt and sunken with malnutrition. Her face looked as if someone had clipped the skin at her cheeks back with clothespins. Abram brought this to light and offered her some of the grapefruits he had stolen from a fruit stand they had passed.

She only shook her head and pushed it back towards him. “You need it more than I do. Now hurry up and eat so we can leave. We’ve been here for too long.”

Then they were running again, and Abram’s memories blurred together like a wet watercolor painting.

Then they vanished and he was a new canvas for Mary to disguise.

She hadn’t been the textbook definition of a "good mother", but she had kept him alive for 17 years and that's all that mattered.

And, after all those years, now he was burning her body.

She had been bleeding out for the past mile and a half, he recalls. And then she had collapsed at the wheel, sending their car skidding into the white sugar sand.

There hadn’t been much of a goodbye, as he had been too busy weeping to do nothing but nod as she screamed empty words as him and he repeated them back to her like a broken record. Satisfied, Mary smiled as he nodded rapidly, then didn’t move at all. Neil didn’t cry then, his reservoir drying up almost instantaneously. Wordlessly, he took the bright red canister of gasoline from the trunk of the car, then began dousing the car in it. Mary’s body wouldn’t move, and the sickly velcro-like sound that came from trying to peel her blood slick body from the vinyl of the car seat sent him dry heaving into the sand more than once, so it stayed put where it was. He reached out and closed her dull brown eyes with two fingers, lit a match, and threw it into the car. The gasoline caught immediately and the stench of burning flesh caused Abram to throw up the remaining bile in his stomach, his chest going into spasms long after his stomach had been emptied. While the fire blazed, he reached in and grabbed bleach white bones from the seat and plunged them into the foamy sea next to him. After washing the bones off in the water, Abram let the burns on his hands heal themselves before digging into the sand and scraping his hands raw again. He placed what was left of his mother into the self-dug hole and cried, turning the white sand gray with uncontained sorrow.

 

Abram shoveled sand back over the hole and placed a single shell on the mound, marking the grave of the woman who raised him up and taught him to run, the woman who hardened into glass to protect her son, the woman who had given way after standing tall for so long

 

Abram picked himself up, took one last look at the embers of a past life, and ran.

Mary Hatford was no more, and neither was Abram.

* * *

 

Neil sat on the cold metal bleachers outside Millport High School, facing the chill of an unwelcoming night by pressing the butt of a cigarette into his knuckles and watching as the darkened skin faded to a more familiar tan. The other boys hated his almost instant healing, they said it wasn’t fair and what’s broken should stay broken. Neil partly agreed with them but didn’t admit to it

 

He had responded by bending his fingers back so far they broke and watching their disgusted expressions as they snapped back into placed and knitted

themselves back together.

 _“Don’t mind business that isn’t yours, boys.”_ , he had said with a smirk. _“It’s very unbecoming.”_ They snarled and walked away, cursing him under their breath, speaking untrue words into existence. He stood there in the locker room for a while, flexing his fingers this way and that to make sure he didn’t damage anything for real, It wouldn’t matter if he had, as it would repair itself by sunrise nonetheless. Such was the burden of having accelerated healing, he never got to feel the adrenaline rush that came with true hurt. The last time he felt anything akin to adrenaline was when his mother had pushed him out of a moving car and onto an unforgiving pavement, scarring half of his chest two shades lighter and two times rawer than it used to be. She urged him to heal quickly so they could keep going, but his entire chest had been laced with white-hot pain, and his healing wouldn’t work, so he willed her mind to forget about it until she truly did.

 

She had hit him for it when he revealed it to her, but it had been worth getting rid of her breathing down his neck even if it was just for a second.

 

Startled out of his head, Neil turned his head at the slight crunch of gravel, his widened eyes catching Hernandez's tired ones.

 

“You know those things aren’t good for you, Josten.” He gestured to the cherry red end of his dying cigarette. “I don’t know how you smoke those things and still manage to perform at your best.”

 

Neil locked eyes with his coach and took a drag from the cigarette, exhaling the smoke from his nostrils. Hernandez sighed and with a wave of his hand, willed the wind to blow the flame out. Neil scowled and took small drags from it to try and coax the cigarette back to life.

 

“You’re helping a lost cause.”, Hernandez chuckled. That wind was from upstate, meaning it’s colder than you’ll ever have to experience. Might as well just leave it be.”

 

Neil crushed the butt of his now dead cigarette under the toe of his sneakers. “There’s a reason you’re out here, Coach. Get to the point.”

 

Hernandez took off his cap and ran his hand through his hair. “You’re too damn perceptive for your own good, Josten. Luckily, if this meeting goes well, you won’t be my problem after graduation.”

 

Neil’s hands went scrabbling for a duffel bag that wasn’t there, pulse quickening. “What meeting?! You never told me I had a meeting with anyone.”

 

“It’s because you don’t. Now stop panicking before you send yourself into shock, kid.”, came a gruff voice. Neil turned to his left to see David Wymack, coach for the Palmetto State Foxes, leaning up against the bleachers. “I’m here to talk to your coach about sending you back to South Carolina with me after your graduation. If all goes well, you’ll be starting as a Fox next year.”

 

Neil was already down the bleachers, having taken them two at a time until his shoes hitting the pavement hard enough to send shocks up his ankles. Both Hernandez and Wymack made a grab for him, but he twisted away from their harsh grips and began sprinting towards the locker room.

 

“This is all my fault.”, Neil muttered to himself, “I didn’t keep moving often enough, I stayed in one area too long, I let myself get attached, stupid, stupid Abram.” He pulled at his curls and pinched at his arms, trying to stop the impending breakdown he knew was coming. Neil pushed at the cool metal door of the locker room, speed not slowing for a second. He ran into a corridor and turned, only to feel his ribs crack under the pressure of an Exy racquet. Neil fell to the floor in a nearly broken heap, gasping for air with a hand to his ribs, desperately trying to feel the telltale feeling of his ribs knitting themselves back together with practiced ease.

 

“Whose racquet did you steal?”, he wheezed, holding his side in a death grip

 

“That’s unimportant.”, the figure tutted. “All that matters is I  have stopped the little rabbit from going farther than he needed to go.”

 

Neil pushed himself backward with his feet, backing himself into a row of benches. His ribs ached something fierce, and he felt blood well up behind his lips, threatening to spill out at any time. The split lip would heal, he knew it would, but his ribs would take longer than they usually would until they healed by themselves since there was no way for him to treat it this time around. They would bruise, definitely. But that would pass as well.

 

The door to the locker room swung open with a loud bang! and Neil heard Wymack’s gravelly voice yell out, “Goddamnit, Minyard! This is why we can’t have nice things!”, his words drowned out by manic laughter.

 

Neil struggled to breathe, air sandpapering his lungs with each heaving breath. Wymack walked over and reached out to help Neil into a sitting position, but Neil shied away upon instinct and propped himself up using the scraped up palms of his hands. Wymack gave him a once over then returned to yelling at the person who has knocked the air out of Neil.

 

“What part of _wait here with Kevin and don’t touch anything_ do you not understand, Andrew?!” Neil’s eyes widened at the mention of Kevin and he gave the room a quick scan, cataloging all the possible exits in case he needed to make a run for it. He’d been hiding from the Moriyamas and their organizations for years, so being seen with their so called “greatest investment” was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. Wymack continued on his tangent, voice falling in pitch yet rising in volume. “You did this exact same thing with Janie, overestimating how much they can take and then leaving us to deal with the broken pieces! You remember what happened to Smalls, right?”

 

“How could I forget, Coach?”, Andrew said with a shark-like grin. “They found her in a bathroom, having used her hydrokinesis in a botched attempt to drown herself. Luckily for the doctors, her previously prescribed medication interfered with using her powers on herself, so she didn’t get far. Now, poor little Janie is under permanent residence at the hospital under a watchful eye. Which is why we’re here to recruit some fresh meat. All you have to do is slap a band-aid on him and he’ll be fine, Coach.”

 

He offered the same toothy grin to Neil. “Won’t you, Josten?”

 

“Fuck you.”, Neil spat out, blood spotting the tile floor. Neil wiped at his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie and Andrew’s eyes tracked the movement. They made eye contact for a brief second, and Neil saw something in Andrew’s eyes, something that scared him to his very bones, then turned away.

 

“There’s no need for that.”, came a familiar voice from the shadows. Neil flinched and braced himself for the shocking look of recognition on Kevin’s face as his eyes scanned the features of the Butcher’s son, recalling all those years ago when they watched Neil’s father cut a man to ribbons and the sickening feeling that would follow.

 

But it never came. Kevin straightened out from where he was leaning against the wall. His eyes scanned Neil’s face, and for a split second, Neil willed away any and all memories of Nathan and Evermore just to ensure Kevin wouldn’t recognize him.

 

“We’ve only come here to recruit you, nothing more and nothing less.”, he said, facing his palms up to the ceiling.

 

Neil coughed, dislodging some of the bile that had stuck in his throat. “Tough luck getting me to come, especially since your little guard dog almost took my stomach out.” A piece of metal thudded dangerously close to Neil’s earlobe, planting itself deep into the plaster wall Neil was leaning up against.

 

“Careful there. I was just inches away from piercing your ears the painful way.” Wymack put his hand over Andrew’s shoulder, a warning and nothing more. The knife wiggled for a bit, then flew back into Andrew’s waiting palm. Neil refused to check his jaw for a cut, not wanting to give Andrew the satisfaction of admitting his fear.

 

Kevin tossed a packet to Neil, who caught it with surprise. “I can feel that flicker of hope you have buried in your stomach, Neil. Take the packet home and mull it over. We’ll be back tomorrow to hear your decision.” Neil flipped through the packet, scoffed, and threw the packet back at Kevin, who caught it with too good accuracy and a knowing smirk.

 

 _Damn him and his fucking perception_ , Neil thought to himself.

 

“I’m not signing your damn contract or joining this little run down, ragtag, group of ne'er do-gooders that you hope to redeem by proving that they're, surprise surprise, as human as they can get. Unlike your team, I actually have plans after graduation and none of them involve being tied down to the likes of you.”, Neil said bitterly.

 

Andrew began laughing maniacally, running wild hands through his hair. “He thinks he as a choice, Coach! How hilarious!” Wymack pushed Andrew, who was laughing breathlessly now, back to Kevin and told them to go wait by the car with a silent glare. After the pair had shut the door behind them, he then crouched down so he was face-to-face with Neil.

 

“Listen, kid, I’m only here because your coach asked me to come.” He followed Neil’s burning gaze to the door and shook his head. “But don’t blame this all on him, this is for your own good. You're getting angry and scared for no reason."

 

Neil shifted his face into a more unreadable mask. He hated empaths and their ability to read emotions like the pages in a book. “What good to me is an Exy team that hasn’t won shit in years and is currently teetering on the edge between Class I and Class II?”, he said around a busted lip.

 

Wymack stared him in the eye, face set like a statue’s. “It's better than what you have now, isn't it? Didn't your mother ever tell you not look a gift horse in the mouth? Take what you can get, Josten."

 

Neil pushed himself up and out of Wymack's line of vision. "My mother didn't like horses. Neither did my father. I've never even heard that until now. So, no, my mother didn't tell me."

 

Wymack scrubbed his hands through his close-cropped hair, sighing in defeat. "You're a piece of work, you know that Josten?"

 

Neil slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. "I get that a lot. I'm looking forward to starting my college year as a Fox, thank you." He gave Wymack a two-fingered salute and walked out.

 

Kevin and Andrew were waiting by a sleek black car, which was surprising to Neil because, in their childhood, Kevin had never been one to follow orders from anyone. The Ravens must have changed him.

 

Andrew was smoking a cigarette, palm cupped around the fiery end to protect it from the nighttime chill. Kevin's face was wrinkled in disgust, either from the smell of the smoke or maybe just the thought of being in Millport more than he would have to, seemed to give him hives.

 

"Guess we'll be seeing a lot more of each other than you would have hoped, Minyard.", Neil announced. Andrew didn't acknowledge him except for the smallest quirk of his eyebrows.

 

Kevin's face shifted through at least 5 different emotions in a matter of seconds, his facial features changing too fast for Neil to snapshot each one.

 

"I told you to sign the contract, Neil. What did Coach say to you that I couldn't?" His face had finally settled into a venomous smile, well-known and well-loved for being "the most real Kevin Day could get", but anyone who knew Kevin behind all the flashing lights and fancy talk shows knew that smile was faker than a zircon passing for a diamond.

 

“Unlike you, Coach actually has some decency.” He shoved the packet at Kevin’s chest, sending him back into the window of the car. “See you next fall.”

 

Kevin frowned and leafed through the packet. “You didn’t sign.”

 

Neil fished the keys to the house he was squatting in out of his bag and twirled the ring around his finger. “Don’t need to. Coach already arranged for me to come.”

 

Kevin muttered something under his breath and put the contract on the back of the car. “Then I look forward to seeing you on our lineup.” He looked to his left and spotted Wymack coming up from the locker room, a cigarette clamped in between his lips. “Guess that’s our cue to get in the car.”

 

Andrew dropped his cigarette onto the dirt trail and stamped it out with the heel of his boot. He locked eyes with Neil for a millisecond, eyes flickering to something feral, then slipped into the passenger side of Wymack’s car. Neil felt the mask he had on his face slipping dangerously and struggles to regain control of it. It had just settled when Kevin placed a hand on Neil's shoulder, nearly sacring the shorter boy out of his skin.

 

“You don’t need to be afraid all the time, Neil.”, Kevin said softly. “I can feel fear radiating off you in waves.”

 

Neil gave him the finger until he got in the car

 

As soon as both men were in the car, Neil took off into a sprint down the trail. The tell-tale crunch of gravel followed him, and Neil picked up the pace. As he turned the corner, a fallen stop sign curled around his ankle and sent him sprawling onto the curb. Wymack's car pulled up beside him and Andrew's manic grin peeked out of the window as it rolled down, hand curled so that his palm was facing up.

 

"Let me go.", Neil growled at Andrew. Andrew only laughed and moved his palm so that the metal pole tightened around Neil's leg. Neil bit his tongue at the feeling of metal digging into the skin of his ankle. Wymack leaned over Andrew from the driver's seat, looking down at Neil.

 

"Need a ride home, kid?", he asked. "Hernandez told me you live quite a ways away from here, and making that run isn't going to be good for your body."

 

Neil stopped trying to unfasten the metal around his ankle and looked at Wymack in confusion. "Did he also tell you I can run a mile in 4 minutes?"

 

Wymack leaned back into the driver's seat and scrubbed a hand down his face. "You said 4 minutes?"

 

Neil went back to trying to get his ankle loose. "Yeah. Is that fast?"

 

"Is that fast, he asks.", Wymack groaned.  That's about 3 to 5 minutes faster than the average time it takes to run a mile!"

 

"Oh." Neil wiped a bead of blood from a fresh cut on the leg of his ratty jeans. "Well, if I'm so fast, can you tell Minyard to let me go before you're down a striker for your starting line? I would hate for your team to miss out on playing in the championships. Again."

 

Wymack grumbled something unintelligible and snapped in front of Andrew's face. "Alright Magneto, drop the act."

 

Andrew's other hand shot out and grabbed Wymack's wrist as if he was resisting, but Neil felt the metal around his leg fall into the dirt.

 

"Never put your hands near me ever again.", Andrew spat with venom. "Either that or you'll be nursing a stump where your hand used to be."

Wymack twisted his wrist from Andrew's grasp and settled his hands back on the steering wheel, far away from where Andrew was still leaning out of the window. "I got it the first time, no need to back it up." He turned back to Neil, who was wiping away the thin line of blood that had formed where the metal had pressed into the skin of his ankle. "I'll see you Palmetto, kid." He rolled up the window and drove away, the wheels kicking up dust as the car pulled onto the main road.

 

Neil watched as the car pulled away and rolled up his pants to begin focusing on his ankle. There was bruising in a near perfect circle around his ankle, along with a few scratches that were slowly oozing blood. He'd have to wait until he got back to his house to properly disinfect it. Picking himself up wasn't an issue and his ankle seemed to hold up better than he thought. The bruises were already healing themselves, but the cuts wouldn't heal properly until he took proper care of them.

 

He shifted from foot to foot, testing the weight distribution on both his injured and uninjured foot. Satisfied, he began jogging back to his house.

 

 _This time next year, I'll be a Fox_ ., he thought to himself. _How about that?_

 

Neil knew it was wrong to hope for something so strange when he most likely wouldn't live to see the end of his freshman year.

 

But the feeling of something to hope for was light on his chest, so he kept it there anyways.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> in this au genetics are a thing so you get two powers, one from each of your parents, one is dominant over the other so people usually claim they have just one. recessive power usually only comes out when under extreme physical/mental/emotional stress. adults usually grow into the power they use the most, so dual powers can be a thing. there are kids with a single power, which only happens if nearly everyone in their family grows into the same type of power. this can also be influenced by how they act, causing their recessive power to cancel out.
> 
> this chapter's powers:  
> neil has mental manipulation(think jedi mind trick) and accelerated healing  
> andrew has reality manipulation(uses it mostly to hide the manic look in his eyes) and metal manipulation  
> kevin has accelerated perception and is an empath but to a lower extent  
> wymack is an empath but due to his nature, no one actually believes it  
> hernandez has control over wind  
> (powers for characters will only be revealed at the end of their debut chapter.)


End file.
